Maybe Someday
by snapesgirl21
Summary: Ranger and Stephanie ponder their future when she's kidnapped by a Newark gang. One-shot, takes place after Top Secret Twenty-One.


_This takes place after Top Secret Twenty-One and is dedicated to Proudofyoubabe as the 500__th__ reviewer on Stay. _

_**Stephanie's POV**_

I've lost count of how many times I've been told that I'm a magnet for disaster. I attract weirdoes, psychopaths, fire bombs, and dog shit, and I have no idea how I do it. For the most part. But as I sat down on the floor of the Delgado Market in Newark, I was pretty damned certain that I'd had _nothing_ to do with the trouble that had walked in the door. I was just there to pick up the stock boy, Tomas Rubio, who had gotten arrested for stealing a car while visiting his brother in Trenton and had forgotten to show up for his court date. Tomas had a severely injured leg, a result of crashing the car he'd stolen, so he was still in a walking cast. I'd left Lula in Trenton and come to Newark on my own. It couldn't be very hard to catch a guy with a cast on his leg.

The market was a small, family owned-and-operated store in a heavily Latino section of Newark. Most of the signs were in Spanish, but thankfully everyone who worked at the store was bilingual. I'd just been pointed in the direction of Tomas, his pissed-off boss leading the way as to fire Tomas's ass before I slapped the cuffs on him, when the electricity went off, followed by a few moments of confusion and questions before total silence fell over the small building. All eyes were trained on the seven men blocking the exits at the front of the store. They were all Latino men, ranging in ages from late-teens to maybe thirty. They all sported red do-rags, baggy jeans, and enough bling to decorate the New Year's Eve ball in Times Square. They had the cold, dead looks of people who had lived hard lives in a short time span. Three of the older guys had tear drop tattoos. And each of them held a weapon. Commotion from back of the store revealed other members of what I presumed was the same gang herding people from the edges of the store towards the front by the three checkout lanes.

The man standing at the head of the group by the door shouted something in Spanish, which startled several people. One-by-one, everyone began raising their hands, wallets or purses held high, until they reached a designed point between the checkouts and the shelves on the end of the aisles. People were sitting down single-file across the main aisle of the store, hands still raised while the gang members enclosed the group on all sides. There was more shouting in Spanish, which I couldn't understand.

"What are they saying?" I asked the manager as we held our hands up and moved towards the rest of the group.

"They're saying they'll shoot us if we don't do exactly as they say," he said, his voice trembling. "I've never had any problems from the gangs before. They don't usually come down this way. This is supposed to be a buffer zone."

One of the gang members came up and whacked the manager in the side with a baseball bat, yelling at him as he winced. The manager replied and the guy turned to look at me.

"What you doin' here if you don't speak Spanish, bitch?" the guy asked, stepping in between the manager and me. He was a few inches shorter than me and sported two teardrop tattoos under his left eye.

"I'm just here to pick someone up," I said, attempting to keep my voice steady though my insides were shaking with terror. "I'm not even from here."

The guy shook his head in mock sadness and clicked his tongue. "You picked a bad day to be here. Get your ass over there with the rest of the group."

A quick count told me there were about twenty-three people—customers and employees— in the store. The store manager had helped an older Latina woman sit down before taking a seat next to her, his hands raised once more. I took a spot on the floor on the other side of the woman. Seven of the gang members had guns trained on the group, daring anyone to try to make a run for it or call for help. The hostages consisted of mostly women with a few male employees. The average age was about fifty, and thankfully there weren't any children present.

Once I was seated, a couple of the men began going through the group while three more started going through cash registers and the rest kept their weapons at the ready. They were opening wallets, calling people by name after checking out licenses or ID cards while they took their cash. They seemed to be making comments on the pictures they found, either laughing at them or whistling and making obscene gestures when they found a woman attractive. I was amazed at how much money was being accumulated just from the people in the store. This crowd either didn't have bank accounts or didn't trust them enough to keep their money safe. One of the men cleaning out the registers came over and grabbed the manager by the collar, practically dragging him towards what I assumed was the office. Probably wanting to clean out the store safe.

I could hear the woman next me murmuring what sounded like a prayer, since I did know that _Dios_ meant God. The man that seemed to be the leader of the group approached her, snatching her purse from her hand. He rifled through it and opened a tan leather wallet.

"Rosa Manoso," he murmured, looking up at her. I couldn't understand what he said next, except for the name _Carlos Manoso._ The woman nodded her head at whatever the guy had asked, and I had a sudden flashback to being in Newark with Ranger a couple of years before when his daughter had been kidnapped. We'd been in this area, canvassing his parents' neighborhood for information, and when I'd commented about everyone speaking Spanish, he'd said the only person who didn't speak English was his Grandma _Rosa_.

A slow, evil smile crossed the man's face as he pulled the cash out of her wallet.

"Hey Miguel, we've got Ranger's granny here," he said to the other guy who was cleaning out wallets. "How much do you think he'd pay to get her back?"

Miguel let out a low whistle. "I'd say a lot. He's loaded now."

The other guy nodded. "I agree. We'll take her with us when we leave."

"No!" I said quickly, my mouth working faster than my brain. "Take me instead. I'm his —girlfriend," I said, unable to find a better word to define the relationship I had with Ranger.

Miguel and the leader exchanged looks. "_You're_ Ranger's bitch? I think you're full of shit. He'd want hotter pussy than that."

My hackles raised a little at being referred to as anyone's _bitch_ and _pussy_, but I fought the urge to snarl and nodded. The leader grabbed my messenger bag and open my wallet.

"Stephanie Plum," he said. "I've heard about you. You're that bitch bounty hunter out of Trenton that's always on the news for some shit or other."

"You can take me if you want, but let his grandmother go," I said. "She's old. She might have a heart attack or something. Then you wouldn't get anything."

The guy turned around whispered with Miguel in Spanish for a minute as the people cleaning out the registers came over to join the group.

"Yo, E," one of the other guys said, hurrying over to the leader. "Man, that's my Aunt Rosa. Don't take her stuff. She's old."

E. looked over at Rosa before tossing her wallet back to her. "It don't matter, we got something better than that. We're going to take Ranger's bitch with us," he told the other guy, indicating me. "We're betting Ranger'll pay out big to get her back in one piece."

The other guy's eyes fell on me and a look of pure fear crossed his face. "No way, E. Ranger ain't gonna pay for her. He's gonna come in with his crew and kill us _all_ if we take her."

"You afraid of your _primo_ and his fucking rent-a-cops, Luis?" E. asked, moving to get into Luis's face. "You think he's gonna risk her dying by trying to do anything but what I ask him to do?"

Despite my fear at what might happen if I had to leave with the gang, I nearly laughed at the remark. Comparing the Rangemen to rent-a-cops was like comparing the Incredible Hulk to Gumby. And if this guy thought for a second that Ranger would cave to anyone's demands, even to save me, then he was dumber than he looked.

Luis blew out a breath and looked like he was making a tremendous effort to stay tough. "I know my cousin, yo."

E. shook his head. "If you want to skip out, go ahead. But it had better be because he's your family and not because you're a big pussy who's too afraid of some motherfucker who thought he was better than us and could get out of this neighborhood and get rich."

"He's family, and I ain't gonna cross him," Luis said. His eyes met mine briefly, flicked over to Rosa's and then looked away. I glanced at Rosa, who was glaring holes into her nephew. Someone wasn't going to be getting a warm reception at the next family reunion.

"We're done anyway, E.," one of the other guys said. "Let's get out of here."

E. grabbed me by the arm, dragged me to my feet, and pressed a gun against my back. "Get walking, bitch. And if you try to run, I'll shoot you. Killing Ranger's bitch would be almost as good as getting his money."

I heard Ranger's grandmother start crying and speaking in rapid Spanish, but Luis said something to her that caused what sounded like tearful pleas to turn into angry yelling.

We walked out of the store into the bright afternoon sunlight. There were three other gang members loitering around outside the store entrance, which I was sure had been to deter anyone else coming down the sidewalk. A quick glance around the street told me that it was deserted except for the crew that was now loading up into several cars and SUVs that were lined up along the street. I was ushered towards a red Cadillac with shiny rims. E. opened the trunk and pulled out a rope, which he used to tie my hands behind my back.

"We ain't got enough room for you in the car, so you'll have to ride in the economy seat," he said, laughing at his own joke as he shoved me down into the trunk.

I heaved a disgusted sigh. I _hated _being stuck in trunks. They were uncomfortable and didn't allow me to see where I was going. I didn't know Newark well enough if I managed to escape to be able to get somewhere neutral. E. dug through my messenger bag and pulled out my cell phone, scanning through it for a minute before hitting some buttons. He put the phone on speaker and I listened while it rang twice.

"Babe," Ranger said when he picked up the phone. He answered the phone the way he did whenever I called him. He didn't expect a gangbanger to be on the other end.

"_Babe_ can't come to the phone right now, Ranger," E. said. "She's a little tied up."

There were a few beats of silence on the other end. I could imagine Ranger tracking my cell phone location with the GPS. "You don't want to fuck with me, E. Especially when it comes to Stephanie."

E. laughed. "I want $500,000 in cash by midnight or I'm gonna start having fun with her." E. raked his eyes over my body. "She must have some good pussy if you keep her around."

The trunk slammed shut before I could hear Ranger's response, and I allowed myself start to shaking with fear, praying that Ranger could get to me in time.

I was in the trunk of the car for hours, trying not to cry and failing at it. I wasn't sure how long it had been, but when the trunk finally opened, I could see that we were inside a building. E. helped me out of the trunk and steered me across the room. It looked like we were in a small, abandoned warehouse where the sky lights showed the last orange lights of dusk. The gang had clearly taken over the warehouse and turned it into their den, as there were chairs and benches scattered around the room, the walls covered in graffiti of gang signs and posters of naked women. Tables were set up along one wall, where blocks of cocaine were stacked next to large piles of cash. I could see a couple of the guys heading over to the table and emptying the bags of cash and jewelry taken at the market on one of the tables.

"We got a special ladies' lounge right over here," E. said, pulling me into what would have been an office. There was a filthy, bare mattress on the floor, a crack pipe and other drug paraphernalia on a rickety table, and a wall stained with what looked like blood. There were shackles that hung from the ceiling and some bolted to the floor. I was shoved against the wall and my legs restrained before the rope was untied and my hands were cuffed over my head.

"That should hold you until Ranger pays up," E. said as he ran one of his fingers down my neck, between my breast, and down the zipper on my jeans. "Or until I'm ready to start having fun with you."

I shuddered with repulsion and nerves, and E. laughed before turning off the lights and shutting the door, leaving me alone in the dark. I could hear the rest of the group laughing and talking loudly in the main part of the warehouse. I hadn't been able to get a count on the number of men in the warehouse that hadn't been at the market, but I figured it was upwards of forty. Ranger and his men were good, but I wasn't sure if they could take on these numbers without help. Having seen the men Ranger employed, I could only imagine the type of people he would recruit for one-off jobs, especially of this nature.

I had to let myself think of anything but my current situation. I couldn't dwell on what they might do to me before Ranger got there. I'd volunteered myself to come here. They may not have done more than stolen the five bucks in my wallet and my watch had I kept my mouth shut, but I couldn't have done that. Ranger's grandmother probably would have had a heart attack if she'd been locked in that trunk for hours. And I knew without a doubt that Ranger would have done the same thing if he and a member of my family had been in a similar situation.

I allowed myself to imagine Ranger in action, commanding his troops, spurring them into action. I could imagine video feeds being hacked, GPS towers triangulated, bribes being offered, threats being made. Ranger would be in his zone, no emotional expression as he hauled ass up the Turnpike towards Newark, probably wondering what the hell I was even doing here to begin with. I had little doubt that people would die in the effort to save me, I just prayed they were none of the Rangemen. The people holding me didn't seem like they were the type to simply put their hands in the air when threatened.

My mind went back to Ranger's grandmother. I'd seen a resemblance there in the eyes and the nose. I remembered him telling me once that she cooked all day and spoke Spanish in severe contrast to my gun-toting grandmother's interest in pay-per-view porn. I'd always wondered if Ranger actually had family or if he just made them up to appear more human, but now I could imagine her bustling around a small kitchen, could imagine Ranger stopping by to compliment her cooking and give her a kiss on the cheek. All that just from sitting next to her on the floor of a grocery store during a robbery. Imagine what it might be like if I actually met the rest of the family. We'd probably be engaged.

I thought back to the conversation I'd had with Ranger a couple of months before, where he'd admitted that he's considered marrying me at times. _Maybe someday_, I told myself.

My outlandish musings were interrupted by the sounds of men yelling, gun fire, and several other sounds that I couldn't identify. I struggled against my restraints, knowing it was useless, hoping that someone from Rangeman would think to look for me in the office during the chaos, getting to me before any of the gangbangers could. For a millisecond, as I felt pieces of the ceiling start to fall down on me, I thought maybe I had pulled the restraints loose, but quickly realized the truth as I registered a moment of sharp pain in my head and lost consciousness.

_**Ranger's POV**_

I didn't like knowing that Ernesto Martinez had Stephanie. Ernesto was part of the gang that had tried to initiate me when I was fourteen, when I got busted with a stolen car, was sent to juvie and then later to Miami. He'd been a few years younger than me, but his older brother had been in the gang. They had tried to get me to run away from Miami and to come back to Newark. They promised they'd take care of me and that they'd help me fight my family if they came for me. They'd recognized my desperate need to fit in and had exploited it. After getting to Miami and finding a better group of friends, I'd been able to turn away from that life, but I'd always gotten hell for it. Whenever I'd been home for visits, the gangs would drive by my house. Some would yell insults or flip me off, others would simply do their best to try to intimidate me. During my college years, I'd had more than one fight with various members of the gangs and had managed to come out mostly unscathed. By the time I'd returned from the Army, the older members that had been working to recruit me as a teenager were either dead or in prison, and a new, younger group that comprised of siblings of older members and a few new recruits decided they wanted to try to take me on. I'd been outnumbered six-to-one, and at the end of the fight, two were dead, two were seriously injured, and two had run off. I'd had a black eye and a couple of broken ribs, but I'd walked away from the fight knowing without hesitation that I would always have a target on my back. They'd have always given me shit for not becoming one of them, but to walk away from a fight that had left two of their own dead meant I was someone they would always be out to get. But they also knew that I wasn't going to be easy to reach. I had skills that they'd only seen in movies and several men surrounding me who had similar skills. But like all successful gangs, they'd found my weakness, and once again exploited it.

I had people working in Trenton and Newark to locate Stephanie while Tank, Hal, Ramon and I sped up the Turnpike with Jose, Martin, Velasquez and Green in a car behind us. Grandma Rosa had called me minutes after I'd been disconnected from Ernesto to tell me that Stephanie had been in Delgado's Market at the same time as she was and that they'd been held up and robbed by the gang. They'd initially planned to take my grandmother and hold her as ransom, but Stephanie had stopped them, told them she was my girlfriend, and begged them to take her instead. The gang had wandered into neutral ground to steal, which was a dangerous thing for both the general population and the gang itself. Other gangs would see this as poaching turf and would retaliate. Stephanie's phone had been ditched in a trash can outside the market. My cousin Luis had been part of the group robbing the store, though he had reportedly made a half-assed effort to protect my grandmother and discourage the kidnapping. I had plans to beat him within an inch of his life once I found Stephanie alive and safe. If she wasn't alive and safe when I found her, he would go down in a pool of blood like the rest of them.

As we reached the outer boundaries of the gang's territory, I called into the control room.

"Give me an update."

"They've been using a warehouse over on Thompson as a base for the last couple of months," Eric told me. "It used to be a place called _Santiago's Electrical Supply._ I got blueprints for it. I'll send a copy to your phone."

"Numbers?"

"My guy said there were usually anywhere from ten to fifty people in there at any given time. He said after something like today, where they'd have a lot of cash and property to sort, they'd probably have closer to fifty there to help and to hide out until the immediate search died down."

We'd be outnumbered six-to-one, but I liked my odds. I'd chosen my best because I knew what I'd be up against. Tank and I had once taken on sixteen armed combatants in Afghanistan by ourselves and had walked away from sixteen dead bodies with nothing more than a couple of scrapes.

We found the warehouse and suited up in our Kevlar vests and comms before heading out to scout the area. The warehouse was in a neighborhood that made Stark Street seem like high rent. Most of the buildings were abandoned, boarded up in an attempt to keep the transients and drug addicts out until the day someone decided to come through and demolish the entire block. The neighborhood was so bad that dealers and hookers didn't even bother to work here. They headed a couple of blocks in any direction to conduct business, knowing that anyone hanging around here would know where to find them. I had just listened to Tank describe the changes the gangs had made to the doors when the sound of a car caught my attention. I held back, gun drawn, and watched as members of a rival gang aimed a rocket launcher out of the sunroof of an Escalade. Someone inside had noticed them and had fired off a few shots before the guy in the Escalade got a shot off. Fire immediately broke out, but something inside exploded, causing the structure to cave in and sending out shock waves strong enough to knock me off my feet. I scrambled up, yelling into my comm as I ran.

"Get inside. Look for Stephanie."

The fire wasn't as bad as I'd expected when I got inside, the roof having smothered some of it when it fell in. I saw a few men running out a back door while others were trying to climb out from under the rubble. Several were unconscious. I'd memorized the blueprints for the building and knew there had been restrooms and a small office on the west side of the building. If I were holding someone hostage in a shit hole like this, I'd keep them in a small room that was easy to contain. I headed in that direction while the rest of my men waded through the mess. The area that held the office was caved in and I stepped carefully, calling out for Stephanie as I did. After a two or three minutes of yelling, I heard her voice coming from under a pile of debris ten feet in front of me.

Tank and I began lifting pieces of wall and roof off her, finding that the shackles around her wrists were attached to one of the pieces. We cut her loose and I pulled her out from the pile. Her hair was white with dust, blood trickling down one cheek from a cut above her eye, and her pale face looked like that of someone either in shock or possibly suffering from a concussion. She tried to stand, but was too unsteady and fell against me. I picked her up and carried her as best I could through the debris and out to the street, where several police cars, a fire truck and three ambulances had just arrived on scene.

"I knew you'd save me," Stephanie said, her tone dazed. "You always do. I met your grandmother. She means you're real. Why do you always save me?"

"I love you, that's why," I told her as I stepped over a body.

"Ditto," Stephanie said, giggling as she did so. "I just sounded like Patrick Swayze."

"Babe, you've had a pretty hard hit to the head. You're not making sense."

"It's from that movie," she said, resting her head on my shoulder. "Whenever his girlfriend said _I love you_ to him, he'd always say _Ditto_ back. That's how she knew Whoopi Goldberg was telling the truth about him channeling his spirit through her after he died."

Stephanie lifted her head to look at me as paramedics rushed over to us. "I keep thinking about the _maybe someday, _where we finally get over our shit. But promise me that if one of us dies before we get this crap figured out between us and we have to channel our spirit through Whoopi Goldberg, we'll use _ditto_ as our code word, okay?"

"Sure," I said as I laid her down on a stretcher. I stepped back while the paramedics began taking vitals and doing field assessments. My stomach was still knotted with tension and would be until I was sure that she wasn't seriously injured. The paramedics said that they suspected a concussion but weren't seeing any signs that might indicate internal bleeding. Stephanie would need scans and a better physical exam to confirm.

I went back into the warehouse, where firefighters and police were attempting to extract survivors and retrieve the dead bodies. I made my way across through the building and found Ernesto. He was trapped under rubble up this neck, several pieces of concrete lying around his bloodied head, but he was still alive. He opened his eyes and looked up at me. He tried to speak, but wasn't able to do so. I looked behind me at the first responders, but no one was nearby or shining their flashlight in my direction, so I felt safe enough to bend down to talk to Ernesto. "I told you not to fuck with me. You were dead the moment you took her."

I stepped on top of the debris that was pressing down on Ernesto's chest. I knew the added pressure would crush his ribs and eventually stop his breathing. I watched on as he struggled to breathe and he began to turn blue. It only took a couple of minutes before he quit fighting it, his eyes staring blankly up at me, his mouth open. It felt satisfying to know that he'd paid for what he'd done and couldn't come after Stephanie again, but it also weighed on me. Ernesto probably would have died from his injuries anyway, but I'd still killed him by speeding up his demise. I stepped off the pile and walked back towards a couple of my men who appeared to have been keeping the police occupied while I dealt with Ernesto. We aided the first responders with locating some more of the people in the building and gave our statements to additional officers that had shown up on the scene before we left. Tank and I headed towards the hospital while the rest of the group went back to Trenton. I'd called the hospital to check on Stephanie and had been told that she was having a CT scan at the moment, but that she'd been in stable condition since her arrival.

At the hospital, I left Tank in the lobby and was directed to the small room where Stephanie was resting. She was dressed in a hospital gown, covered with a blanket, and the wound of her eye had been stitched up. She opened her eyes when I came into the room and gave me a small smile.

"How's it going?" she asked quietly.

"So far about five are dead, twenty injured, a few ran off," I said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "How are you doing?"

"They said I have a mild concussion, but nothing serious. They told me I was rambling and talking nonsense when I came in so they gave me something to calm me down."

I picked up her hand and held it. "Yeah, you were comparing yourself to Patrick Swayze when I got you out of the rubble."

Stephanie snorted. "You're kidding?"

I shook my head. "You said _ditto_ when I told you I loved you, said you thought you sounded like Patrick Swayze and that if we died with things unresolved between us we'd channel our spirits through Whoopi Goldberg with _ditto_ as a code word. You said that meeting my grandmother made me _real_. I couldn't keep up."

Stephanie shook her head. "I don't know why I was referencing _Ghost_, but while I was shackled in that office and trying not to panic I thought about your grandmother. I could imagine you spending time with her. You look like her. It makes you seem more human to have a grandmother."

"We've done some pretty human things together," I said, giving her a wink. "I'm not sure why you'd still be questioning it."

"I meant emotionally. You're always so closed off and focused. I never see you sad or worried. I've seen you in very mild shades of happy and mad, but mostly you just seem indifferent to the world and everything about it," Stephanie said, closing her eyes for a moment as she spoke. "I know you care about me and other people, but you're not very demonstrative. It's sad."

I was speechless for a moment. She thought I was pathetic. She could see it through the bullshit— the _machismo_, the military precision, the expensive clothes and cars. I'd done everything I could to disguise that fact, telling myself that I was the only one who knew just how pathetic I truly was. My family might have suspected, but they would never say anything to me. Even then, they were my family. They'd known me as a child, but they didn't know much about me as an adult. No one knew that deep down I was still that young boy who didn't know where he truly fit in. Stephanie's ability to see through the crap and find the truth was part of what made me want to spend my life with her.

I'd battled with myself for the last couple of years about wanting to have a serious relationship with her, had reached the point of asking her, but I hadn't followed through. Something had always happened to stop me, whether it was something on my end or something I'd see from her or Morelli. I kept telling myself _someday_, but I also worried that _someday_ may never come. That she might marry Morelli or someone may finally take me out. Or worse, that someone might kill her. Counting Ernesto, I'd now killed five people in defense of her or out of revenge for trying to hurt her. Each one weighed on my soul, no matter how much I or the law was able to justify it. Each one had pushed me further away from a real relationship with her.

"I also thought that if I had the opportunity to meet the rest of your family, it would practically make us engaged," Stephanie said after a moment, laughing softly to herself.

I kissed her on the forehead. "They'd certainly think so."

I'd only ever introduced two women to my family, one of whom I'd intended to marry until she broke things off. The other I had married because I'd gotten her pregnant. I'd always wanted to introduce Stephanie to my family, because I knew they would love her and she would love them, but I'd resisted because I was afraid of the pressure it would put on us.

The doctor came in to discharge Stephanie a few minutes later, telling her that she needed to have someone stay with her to help monitor her for twenty-four hours, otherwise they could admit her. Stephanie had just finished redressing when there was a second knock on the door. I'd expected it would be an ER nurse or possibly Tank. I hadn't been expecting my mother, who was a nurse up on the maternity floor of the hospital. It was just after midnight, so she was in the middle of her shift. She wore the dark blue scrubs that were designated for the RNs, a pink stethoscope hung around her neck.

"I saw Pierre in the lobby when I came down to get a patient and he told me you were both in here," my mother said, walking over to hug me. "You're Stephanie, of course."

"Steph, this is my mother, Lola," I said. "She obviously works here."

Stephanie gave a small smile and wave. "Nice to meet you, Mrs. Manoso."

"My mother-in-law—the woman you helped spare at the market—is Mrs. Manoso. I'm Lola. I'm not old enough to be called Mrs. Manoso all the time just yet."

She stayed for a couple of minutes to ask how Stephanie was doing and to ask if I'd been injured. I knew she was also sizing up my interactions with Stephanie. I'd be getting a play-by-play analysis the next time I went to a family dinner and my sisters would badger me with more questions than a Congressional committee. My mother excused herself so that we could leave and she could get an expectant mother up to the maternity floor, telling Stephanie that she hoped they could meet up again in more pleasant surroundings.

"She was really nice," Stephanie commented as we walked out of the treatment room. "Does meeting your mother make us practically engaged in your family, or is it closer to _ring shopping_ status?"

I snorted. "I think we're already past that stage." The words came out before I could stop them, but I tried to act as though there was nothing more to be read into the comment. Unfortunately for me, Stephanie's awareness was still intact, albeit a little delayed.

"What did you mean by that?" she asked as we reached the doors. "Do you—have you—?" She trailed off, a look of surprise crossing her face. "Do you have a ring for me?"

I rubbed a hand across my eyes, not excited to be having this conversation in the lobby of the hospital, but I didn't want to have it in front of Tank in the car. I also didn't want to freak her out by making her wait until we got back to Trenton.

"Yes, I do. For the _maybe someday_," I admitted. "I told you a while back that I've seriously considered it. I meant that."

I could tell she was struggling with what was probably a mixture of emotions, so I took her hand and we headed towards the door. "We can talk about it more if you want, but I'd rather wait until we have some time alone."

She nodded. "I'd like that. I like to think about the _maybe someday_ with you."

I kissed her hand and loaded her into the back seat of the Escalade, prepared to give more thought to the idea of marriage. Maybe I didn't need to discount it every time something in my life didn't go the way I expected. Maybe _someday_ wasn't such a _maybe_ anymore.


End file.
